FINE ARTS.
THE WELLINGTON MEMORIAL.
WE revert to this discreditable affair, merely to dispose of the defence set up by the parties to the job. The Duke of RUTLAND, in reply to the remonstrance of some of the absent members of the Committee, states that the phrase " ulterior proceedings" was explained by Mr. CROKER, at the previous meeting, to mean " the choice of a sculptor." This is simply a question of fact : it is plain that the remonstrants did not so understand it ; and also pretty clear that it was not intended any one should, until after the matter was settled. The Morning Post justt- fies the proceeding by instancing the similar course adopted in the case of the City Wellington Statue : now it happens that this too was a job, and planned by the same party, though they were unexpectedly de- feated. Thus, their own crooked way of doing business on a previous occasion, is to be urged as a precedent for this. The plain, broad facts, that stamp disgrace on the whole affair, can- not be gainsaid, or quibbled away. It is notorious that the City Statue was got up expressly as a job for PIGTAIL WYATT ; and that failing, the present one was planned. The incompetence of the toy-sculptor to model a human figure is equally notorious : the opinion of any one who can doubt it, after seeing his figure of George the Third, and his group of sheet-swathed bolsters at Windsor, is worth very little. A correspondent of the Sun, with perverse ingenuity, argues that the want of kingly dignity in the Pigtail Statue is favourable to the truth of the representation ; and thence infers WYATT'S qualification to make a characteristic effigy of Welling■on. But, as we have shown over and over again, the fault of the figure is the badness of the imitation of reality—its incorrectness is greater than its inelegance. The form is not human ; and, viewed from a proper distance, the features even are unlike.
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